Brazil’s Oil Production Has the 1st Drop Since 2013

Oil production in Brazil in 2018 totaled 2.586 million barrels a day, on average, down 1 percent from 2017, the first annual reduction since 2013, according to the National Petroleum Agency, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP) on Monday.

The slight drop in the country’s oil production was due to shutdowns scheduled for maintenance at large production fields, including the pre-salt, said National Petroleum Agency.

Natural gas production has not suffered as much from the shutdowns and benefited from the increase in some fields, the sector regulator added, pointing up 1 percent on the daily average to 111 million cubic meters.

Oil production in Brazil in December reached 2,691 million barrels per day, on average, high of 4.8 percent in comparison with November and increase of 3 percent versus December 2017, according to the ANP.

Brazil’s natural gas production increased 1.2 percent in December from November to 114 million cubic meters a day, up 0.3 percent from the same month in 2017.

Considering oil and gas, in December, according to National Petroleum Agency, Petrobras produced 2.56 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, on average, of a total of 3.4 million barrels of oil equivalent produced in the country.

Last year, the state-owned company had oil production in Brazil slightly below the company’s target.

For 2019, the expectation is that Petrobras‘ oil production will increase by 10 percent against 2018, with new production systems, which should give a new boost to the extraction in Brazil.